A shy little girl has joined the family

The RSPCA called us last week to see if we had room for a female rat that had been brought in who needed an experienced home. She was a little bit nervy, with a tenancy to nip and seeing as we had adopted a problem rat from them before, they thought they’d give us a try.

We thought long and hard about it and decided that because she was alone we could squeeze in another girl and so we went to meet her. She was called Venus and when we saw here we were happily surprised to see she looked very much like our sweet girl Petal. Venus had been brought in by an RSPCA inspector. Her previous owner had been keeping her in a hamster cage and judging by her timid nature she hasn’t been played with very much at all.

As expected she is very nervous, but she looks surprisingly healthy and inquisitive. From her shape and size we think she is still quite a young rat, probably between six months to a year in age. When we first decided to adopt her I wanted to call her Raspberry, but after seeing how much she looked like Petal we had to give her a flower related name. So, we have named her Tulip.

For now we are giving her lots of time, space and treats to help her settle in and find her confidence. We may have to wait a while to take pictures of her too, we don’t want to scare her, as she can be a bit jumpy when we move about. Hopefully given time she is going to become another fun loving member of the family, and I’ll have lots of stories to tell about the trouble she and her new sisters get into.